would be where they were located. The death certificate listed an address for her next of kin, but when he cross- checked the address against the name, he determined someone different was living at that location. There were a number of Tysons in the area outside of Pensacola and it seemed a daunting task to try to ascertain who was who, until Ricky remembered his own scrawled notes from his few sessions with the woman. She was a high school graduate, he recalled, with two years of college before dropping out to follow a sailor stationed at the naval base, the father of her three children.
Ricky printed out the names of potential relatives and the addresses of every high school in the area.
It seemed to him, as he stared at the words on the sheets of computer paper, that what he was doing was what he should have done so many years before: try to come to know and understand a young woman.
He thought that the two worlds couldn’t have been much different. Pensacola, Florida, is in the Bible Belt. Jesus-thumping, raised voices, praise the Lord and go to church on Sunday and any other day when His presence was needed. New York-well, Ricky thought, the city probably stood for pretty much everything anyone who grew up in Pensacola knew to be wrong and evil. It was an unsettling combination, he thought. But he was relatively certain of one thing: He was far more likely to find Rumplestiltskin in the city than in the countryside of North Florida. But he didn’t think that the man had had no impact down South.
Ricky decided to start there.
Using the skills he’d already mastered, he ordered a fake Florida driver’s license and retired military identification card from one of the novelty identification outlets on the Internet. The documents were to be sent to Frederick Lazarus’s Mailboxes Etc. box number. But the name on the identification was Rick Tyson.
People were likely to want to help out a long-lost relative, he thought, who innocently appeared to be trying to trace his roots. As a further hedge, he made up a fictional cancer treatment center, and on invented stationery wrote a “to whom it may concern” letter, explaining that Mr. Tyson’s child was a Hodgkin’s disease patient in need of a bone marrow match, and any assistance in tracing various family members, whose marrow DNA carried an increased chance of match success, would be appreciated and possibly even lifesaving.
This letter was wholly cynical, Ricky thought to himself.
But it would likely open some doors he needed to open.
He made himself an airplane reservation, made arrangements with his landladies and with his boss at the university maintenance department, switching around some workdays and hours to give himself a block of time, then he stopped in at the secondhand clothing store and purchased himself a simple, extremely cheap summer-weight black suit. More or less, he thought to himself, what a mortician would wear, which, he believed, was appropriate for his circumstances. Late in the evening of the day before he was to depart, wearing his janitor’s shirt and work pants, he let himself into the theater department at the university. One of his passkeys opened the storage area where costumes for various college productions were kept. It did not take him long to find what he needed.
There was a heavy dampness hidden like a veiled threat in the heat of the Gulf Coast weather. His first breaths of air, as he walked from the airconditioned chill of the airport lobby out to the rental car waiting area, seemed to hold an oily, oppressive, slick warmth far removed from even the hottest days up on Cape Cod, or even in New York City during an August heat spell. It was almost as if the air had substance, that it carried something invisible, yet questionable. Disease, he thought at first. But then, he guessed that was too harsh a thought.
His plan was simple: He was going to check into a cheap motel, then go to the address that was written on Claire Tyson’s death certificate. He would knock on some doors, ask around, see if anyone currently at that location knew of her family’s whereabouts. Then he would fan out to the high schools closest to the address. It wasn’t much of a plan, he thought, but it had a journalistic sturdiness about it: knock on doors and see who had something to say.
Ricky found a Motel 6 located on a wide boulevard that seemed to be dedicated to little except strip mall after strip mall, fast-food restaurants of every imaginable chain, and discount shopping outlets. It was a street of sun-washed cement, glowing in the undeniable sun of the Gulf. An occasional palm or shrub-brush landscaping seemed washed up against the shore of cheap commerce like flotsam and jetsam after a storm. He could taste the ocean nearby, the scent was in the air, but the vista was one of development, almost endless, like a repeating decimal of two-story buildings and garish signs.
He checked in under the name Frederick Lazarus, and paid cash for a three-day stay. He told the clerk he was a salesman, not that the man was paying all that much attention. After surveying the modest room, Ricky left his bag and walked through the parking lot to a convenience store gas station. There, he was able to purchase a detailed street map for the entire Pensacola area.
The tract housing near the sprawling naval base had a certain uniformity to it that Ricky thought might be similar to one of the first circles of Hell. Rows of cinder-block framed houses with tiny splotches of green grass steaming beneath the sun and ubiquitous sprinklers dashing the color with water. It was a short- hair-and-page-boy-cut area; it seemed to Ricky, driving through, that each block had a quality to it that seemed to define the aspirations of the inhabitants; the blocks that were well mowed and modestly manicured, with houses freshly painted so that they glistened with an otherworldly bright white beneath the Gulf sun seemed to speak of hope and possibility. The cars that rested in the driveways were clean, polished, shining, and new. There were swing sets and plastic toys on some of the lawns, and despite the midmorning heat, some children were at play beneath the watchful gaze of parents. But the lines of demarcation were clear: A few blocks in a different direction and the houses gained a worn, more used appearance. Run-down, flaking paint, and rain gutters that were stained with use. Streaks of brown dirt, chain-link fences, a car or two up on cinder blocks, wheels removed, rusting. Fewer voices raised in play, trash cans filled past their brims with bottles. Blocks of limited dreams, he thought.
In the distance, he was aware that the Gulf, with its expanse of vibrant blue waters, and the station, with great gray navy ships lined up, was the axis on which everything revolved. But as he moved farther from the ocean, deeper into disadvantage, the world he traveled in seemed limited, aimless, and as hopeless as an empty bottle.
He found the street where Claire Tyson’s family lived, and shuddered. It was no better, no worse than any of the other blocks, but in that mediocrity, spoke volumes: a place to flee from.
Ricky was looking for number thirteen, which was in the middle of the block. He pulled up and parked outside.
The house itself was much the same as the others in the block. A single-story, small two- or three-bedroom home, with air conditioners hanging from a couple of windows. A slab of concrete served as front porch and a rusty black kettle grill was leaned up against the side. The house was painted a faded pink and had an incongruous thirteen in hand-lettered black near the door. The one was significantly larger than the three, which almost indicated that the person who’d put the address on the wall had changed his mind in midstroke. There was a basketball hoop nailed to the portal of an open-air carport that looked to his unpracticed eye to be six inches to a foot lower than regulation. Regardless, the rim was bent. There was no net. A weathered, faded orange ball rested against a stanchion post. The front yard had a neglected look to it, streaks of dirt sidled up against grass choked with weeds. A large yellow dog, chained to a wall, confined by a steel fence to the tiny, square backyard, started to bark furiously as he walked up the driveway. That morning’s paper had been left near the street, and he picked it up and carried it to the front door. He touched the buzzer and heard the bell sound inside. A baby was crying inside, but quieted almost instantly as a voice responded, “I’m coming, I’m coming…”
The door opened and a young black woman, toddler on her hip stood before him. She did not open the screen door.
“What you want?” she demanded, furious and barely constrained. “You here for the TV? The washer? Maybe the furniture? Maybe the baby’s bottle? What you gonna take this time?” She looked past him, out to the street, her eyes searching for a truck and a crew.
“I’m not here to take anything,” he said.
